Kickstarter Update (lower tier rewards increase)!

First off, let me begin by saying thank you to those of you who have pledged your support for the Kalijor RPG Kickstarter project. It is through your generosity and support that it will see fruition.

That said, I want to let you know how things are going. We are currently sitting at just over 25% funded, with a little over two weeks left to reach our goal. This means we need to generate interest enough to pull together another $6,000 of support in about 16 days. I know we can do it, but we have to work together to make it happen. So what I am going to do in order to help, is increase some of the rewards at the lower tiers of support. Unfortunately, I cannot make the change to the Kickstarter directly, as there are already supporters in those tiers, so I’m making an announcement and asking you all to spread the word.

So here it is. I am adding a set of bookmarks to the $10 support tier. This is five bookmarks, including one each of Riana, Katrina, Exodus, and Jumah, all rendered by Kalijor novel cover artist, David Magoun, and the fifth is an anime/manga style image with a bunch of the main characters from the books. This fifth image is going to become the cover for the Kalijor: Kids RPG book when it goes to press.

At the $25 level, I am adding a 6×9 card stock print of some Kalijor art. I haven’t decided on the final image yet, but it will be something David Magoun has done for the Kalijor world and, while it will not be a limited edition print like those at higher tiers of support, it will be a high quality, frame-able piece of art that you can proudly display in your home or office.

In other news:

StarFest is right around the corner! Two weeks to go until the official release of the Fifth Key of Kalijor to the public.

I am super excited about this release as it marks both the culmination of my very first major story line and, I think represents a tremendous new level of writing quality and production value. I have learned so much on this journey (and I’m not done learning yet) and I have you all to thank for that opportunity. I look at where my writing was in 2007 when I released the First Key and compared to today, well… there really is no comparison. The quality of the writing is up. The quality of the story-telling is up. And the quality of the layout and physical design of the book is up.

So, to say thank you, I spent last night pushing out the digital versions of the Fifth Key. I am still waiting on some approvals (Apple can take a while), but those of you who use a Kindle, or the Kindle app on another device, can now purchase your eCopies of the Fifth Key of Kalijor on the Amazon Kindle marketplace! I will make additional announcements as the book is released on other platforms.

The next novel, ‘Kalijor: The Aegis Protocol’, will be going out to test readers soon! Probably just after StarFest. I am giddy at the prospect of having the next novel completely done well before StarFest next year. The book is written, and is even in second draft. I was thinking about it this morning and I want to make a couple more tweaks, but it is ready to go out to test readers and then to editing (after some revisions from test readers). This book is Daray Bowen’s origin story and I am really looking forward to sharing it with you.

After that, we have Alina’s origin story, ‘Kalijor: The Turin Gambit’ (also already written but in need of more cleaning up before it gets shared), and then a whole story arc involving Daray, Alina, and a couple other folks we’ve met in the Keys of Kalijor story arc. The nice thing is that the majority of these stories are already written and just need revising and cleaning up. This means that the next few novels are already on standby and I can take some time to focus on new projects, such as the role playing games, the graphic novels, and some other things I have waiting in the wings to share with you all.

The last bit of news is that I have just completed the outline for another new novel that takes place long after the final pages of ‘The Fifth Key of Kalijor’. I can’t tell you much more than that, because I don’t want to give away anything in the Fifth Key, but I am really eager to get to writing on this one. It will be a fresh new take on things with new characters (and some cameos here and there from old friends), new plot twists, and what I hope will be a slightly more ‘mature’ feel to it.

Okay, I think that’s about it, folks.

Thank you again for making all of this possible, and please, share the Kickstarter link with everyone who will listen. Sure, we can get all of this done without the Kickstarter campaign, but we can do much more, much sooner with the support of such a program!